Fake-Fat Sunny

Add to that WM playing for the Bills for the first time and actually in 2004 we got out first look and contribution from our 2003 1st round drat pick. I think his case is even a more legitimate claim of Buffalo seeing the first contributions of two 1st round picks from WM and Evans rather than Evans and Losman.

At Pilot Field lasr night (whoops NorthAmericare Park) they were advertsing the National Wing Festival wing is schedule to occur in Buffalo Sept. 2-4. Perhaps some TSW crew can settle this issue then. Perhaps folks want to set up a table at some nearby public location where designated "flyers" will grab the wings of various restaurants and bring them to the table where our designated taste testers will sample the fare and vote. Certainly this can be done by TSW if anyone is so moved to organize something as a fundraiser sponsored by TSW for Hunter's Hope in his memory as just because he is unfortunately gone does not mean that we will forget about him or the disease which took him. I would bet the media might have an interest also in such an event which would help TSW and most of all Hunter's family and the fight against the disease.

I agree. I wish that the game was actually treated like a game and that what happened was primarily or only focused on building a team into a TEAM and that the level of activity and focus were exclusively toward the goal of winning the game. However, not only is this real life where concessions have to be made toward bringing in the Benjamins so that these players can be compensated for playing this boys' game for our enjoyment, but actually what used to be a sport that happened to also be a business is increasingly a business that happens to be a sport. I think we are unfortunately seeing more and more of this as idiots like Terrel Owens and Ross Verba seem to be treating the game more as though they were independent contractors looking to make their own deals for their benefit rathet than being primarily motivated by the love of the game. The Bills as one of the teams are prime drivers of this system and the partnership betwwen the NFL and NFLPA reflected in the CBA. Part of this dance is that the employers will get whatever they can out of the employees in order to bring in the bucks and the employees will try as a cillaborative to have as few requirements as possible and allow their members to act as indeoendent contractors. its sad to me to lose the prime focus on the sport but such is the way of the world.

It does if the Bills feel they need to do this to make a buck and they can convince or require their employees to do this.

Given MM's interest in deceptive and trick plays my guess is that the has considered using any additional talents a player has in unexpected ways. If Bannan and Adams can play OG, Cenney can be used as a TE and the Bills used Bledsoe/WM and the WRs for a series of flip passes and laterals, it is not a jump at all to consider using Reed where he is useful and perhaps that is as an RB. In particular, the Bills have even before MM made healthy use of the end-around so WRs get used as runners. My sense is that when Reed get his turn doing this, if he proved to be an elusive and effective runner, the team has no trouble going with reality and changing his role to fit it. Another example of this was how Peters showed he could not be blocked as a pass rusher and next thing you know he was an ST stalwart. The idea of Reed as a 3rd down RB type makes so sense because of his pass use as an RB. However, this probably has greater utility for getting some use out of Reed than being a real need for the Bills in terms of production as Shaud Williams looks very good as our 3rd down RB option. This is the player Reed would have to be better than to get this role. My sense is that Reed would be a WR/RB while Williams would be a RB/pass catcher in this role. The question would likely be whether Williams can produce to be more like a WR than simply a pass-catcher. I do like the idea that you bring in Reed on a down and distance where it is third and might be a run or might be a pass. If the opponents face this 3 receiver set by bringing in an extra CB to play the nickel, you line Reed up as an RB and run at this lighter CB. If however, the D treats him as an RB and keeps in a standard set with the LB then you line-up Reed as a WR. Reed had a good first year when the double team assigned to Moulds and increasingly to Price as he produced meant Reed got to feast on LBs and 4th or 5th DBs on pass plays, With Parrish hurtt, the key to this is probably the coverage Moulds/Evans draw.

I sympathize totally and actually commend you for making the tough choice. If you want to go even further in playing the market game then I would e-mail the folks of Mars Volta and System and let them know that you had to pass on enjoying their art (if they are in this for the expression) and not pay the band and their hanger-ons their 60% of the take because you found the Ticketmaster and others 40% excessive. Ultimately as far as the free market Ticketmaster will only be rolled back when the artists that they live off of force them to lower their take.

I'd love to see an explanation of how the Bills can even offer NC a contract under the current cap at Champ Bailey $. Our current cap room only allows an $18 million dollar bonus to made if the bonus is prorated over 6 years abd then current players are cut to put together the room to pay NC the vet minimum. 1. With current CBA extension negotiations stalled as the owners fight with each other before they can even negotiate with the players I'm not even sure we can sign a contract long enough with NC to absorb an $18 million bonus. 2. Even if we could make such a deal it would: A. Not only blow the Bills budget with NC making far more than any other Bill, but also: B. Strip us of cap room making it hard to offer anything to a player on the waiver wire in case of injury and impossible to take advantage of situations like the Milloy deal. If NC signs now he knws he is crippling or virtually ending out playoff chances this year. C. Eliminate the possibility of making other moves like extending McGee. I'm not sure TD can make a deal unless NC is really willing to take significantly less than the market would give him. If you know how a deal can be done and what amount below the market Clements will take I am all eyes.

I think the mistake people are making here is that they seem to think that the price charged for a service is primarily determined by the price of the service. Prices are set based on what the market will bear and that is about it. The cost to give a service or make a product is somewhat involved, but only to the extent that if that cost is more than what the market will bear in order to turn the profit the investor wants then no rational actor will invest in making the product or providing the service. However, since goods and services are often realtively cheap to produce in bulk and the costs of labor are going down relative to the product produced to trechnological advances and squeezing additional productivity out of US workets who in general (and increasingly specifically as technology nows allows for the outsourcing of even service jobs like phone answering to cheap wage countries) have to work harder to keep up with the joness, prices are really only determined by what the market will bear. The fact it may only cost ticketmasters mere pennies per transaction to serve you is irrelevant to them (besides lowering these costs increases their profit) in terms of how much they charge you. They are one of the growing number of businesses have been able to essentially create a monopoly in the market places where they sell services and thus can charge rexhorbitant prices until enough people stop buying tickets. Just as the relative skill of a football player is only a starting point for how much he makes and timing issues of being in the league long enough to put his contract in the relatively free market and variations in the supply and demand of that market have much more to do with determining a specific contract value, so too does the relative cost of the service is far from the lead issue in determung the ultimate contact costs,

The question is whether folks find it interesting (or vexing) that Fucillo has such a deluge of ads or whether it is normal for a person tobe so deluged with TV watching and radio listening. As a child of way too much TV exposure as a kid it seems to be survivable from my point of view (though if I am deranged I would not know that I was deranges). Sour remarks are interesting from a couple of perspectives,

It is a fact that we have been hit with a rash of serious injuries. Though they hurt. the losses of a oft injured OL player who it is doubtful would have made the team and a reserve guard who I liked and was pleased he made the jump from the Ravens PS to start for us but who may well have not made the squad this tear are not horrible losses. The nick that has kept Villarial out is the worse injury on the OL but as far as can be told he is being kept out as a precaution and the opening coincides nicely with the return of Tucker. Tje OL situation is still unsettled which is not good. However, this particular set of injuries give us not more impetus to solve this problem than we had before and does not seem to seriously reduce the uncertain resources we had prior to the injuries. If we the braintrust did not want Verba before things are not so different that they should want him now.

Thanks for the movie advice though generally it is my lovely wife who controls the movie selection as she hates what she judges as wasting her time at what she dubs bad films (oddly enough she has chosen a boxing film "Million Dollar Baby" and a shoot 'em up the afore mentioned War of the Worlds as ourlast two excursions (spoilers below btw). Aslo, oddly enough I didn't care for either (there were too many films going on in Baby and I wish they had just thoroughly explored the sweet science of boxing which I found fascinating to see in the limited detail of Clint teaching Swank but they instead gave too scant focus to the story of euthanasia, AND parenting and kids AND the seedy world of boxing promoters AND too many subplots used peripherally and thrown away like mentally challeneged kid who got beat up and when an athlete should quit. There were some need shots of folks getting vaporized in WofW but the Tim Robbins role was overly convenient nad over the top silly and it was just weird how in some scenes we needed crowds so there were lots of people simply hanging around and then moving closer to danger until it was time to run in terror and get fried or the focus was on 3 characters or so and suddenly the city streets are deserted. It doesn't atand up at all to much thinking about it, but when one does remakes and you know pretty much what is going to happen one ends up thinking about the details or about Tom Cruise fancing on Oprah's couch and yelling about Ritalin.

Looking at it from a Bills business perspective, generally camp used to be treated as a loss leader at most and by paying for amentities for fans whether he be risers to sit on time taken to sign autohraphs it built affinty and loyalty among the customers. The Bills and the rest of the league began to realize that both training camp and the exhibition games could become even more of a cash stream than they were. Fine its the way our economic system works so charging what the market will bear comes with the territory. however, though fans did not pay for the tickets themselves, it does not seem like good business practice to give loyal fans who pay you big bucks for regular tickets to bring them perks any sense of not getting perks they formerly got. There next choice is to not buy premium seats but instead to buy game to game and sit at home and watch TV. Its not a morality question between rich and poorer fans, it just seems like poor business practices that in the end will harm everyone if the result is the Bills are not a going concern.

With the advances in technology like the first down overlay, graphics constantly displaying the time, score. down and distance and the crawl updating out of town scores, much that I used to count upon announcers to provide is there. If one adds in the internet which can increasingly be used in parallel to the image of the game and merely add a commentator who appears once or twice a quarter to explain odd penalties and blown calls and I can easily do without the blather. We can simply whine about as the Internet often is used for, or perhaps TSW might begin to lobby for the announcerless game to make a comeback attempt.

Unfortunately I've had to take the main recourse available to you in a free market which is that I choose not to buy what they are selling. It means that I end up missing out on a lot of concerts and interesting art or entertainment, but such is life where the parameters are increasingly dictated by what one chooses to buy. It will be interesting to see if many people seemingly making the same choice at the movie theatre due to constamt recycling of old art into bad movies (from the Dukes of Hazard to War of the Worlds in my opinion) and expensive ticket prices and popcorn will result in the production of new art or better pricing. We'll see.

Some folk are wailing that the Bills and TD simply ought to show lements the money and pay him. I think the rub in this plan or attitude about TD is that as best as I can tell if i am Nate Clements there is no way I sign a new contract until after this season. I certainly entertain offers from TD and the Bills right now because the sooner we start negotiating the quicker they increase their offers to me. However, 1. Champ Bailey got an $18 million bonus to play and as pointed out on this page there are big problems with his production and clearly I am in his ballpark as a player. TD needs to offer me Chump Bailey type $ to get me to sign. 2. There are real questions whether the cap would even allow him to make such an offer right now. The Bills currently have $3 million in cap space. it would take a six year deal merely to pro-rate an $18 million bonus. Add to that the vet minimum pay for this year and the fact that the market may well give me Chump+ money as the new cap is going way up. 3. Even if the Bills wanted to make a deal and were willing to give me $18 million and make the additional cuts and restructurings of players to create the cap room I think it would easily use up all cap room this year making it difficult for us to replace injured players not to mention taking advantage of a situation like the one that got us Millou. I have to care first about myself since no one else will. Nevertheless my teammates and the team are important to me if I am Clements and I want a world where I both get paid and the team is put in a good place to win. When the new cap hits the team will be in a far better position to do both things, 4. The bird in the hand definitely says Clements should make a good or great deal now rather than risk injury or having a bad year in the hope of getting a great to an outrageous deal from the free market. This is true but one of the things that allows Clements to be so good is an overwhelming confidence that he is actually better than he is. Clements has shown little reluctance to roll the dice for a huge payoff. At any rate, i do not see Clements even wanting to resign to skip the free market or TD having many choices for paying what NC will probably get from the free market. I hope I am wrong. Cap gurus in particular I am curious how long a deal we can sign Clements to before the cap expires as I suspect this is the limit of how much of the bonus we can prorate.

No prob, and i will do my best. I lucked out today because i wrote most of this while listening in on a conference call I had to be there for if called upon but it pretty clearly was not in my area of activity so I really only half listened and got to write. Its quite nice when life cooperates to let you do what you want to do which is follow and think about the Bills.

From my perspective the D age situation revolves not only around their age and status but whether there is a credible plan B if they slip in performance or get injured my depth chart sense is this and I am of course curious what others think. LCB- McGee- clearly on the upside of his career and already a Pro Bolwer at KR. Struggled at times when thrust into the CB starter role with injury to Vincent but improved with experience though he will need to prove himself as also being headed toward Pro Bowl position play. Greer is a good back-up at this spot and even capable of making the occaisional game critical platy. I am more than comfortable with him as a nickel. Vincent is still around if there is a total breakdown at LCB and for a short time. RCB- Clements- Also on the upside as far as development and near the top of his game for position play as he made the Pro Bowl last year. Thomas had good promise as the back-up and performed as the nickel though injury has made him uncertain here until he plays which I understand will be this year. Hill has looked good as a draftee and makes the CB position one of great depth on this team. SS- This is the most uncertain area of the DB as though Milloy proved naysayers wrong when some wrote him off as done when NE let him go prior to the 2003 season (he still is a smart player who tackles well) he did miss 4 or 5 games last that happens more and more with older players. He probably will keep gradually declining until he can't go anymore, but he is a candidate for an unpredictable possible sudden drop-off in production which makes having a plan B all important though one hopes it is not necessary. Back-up Wire has always struggled in pass coverage and can be replaced. His is of an age and has the pedigree to suddenly improve, but even though he clearly is a quality guy has shown no signs of being the SS we need as he was poorly developed and thrown in as starter SS as a rookie when he simply was not good enough to do the job. Health and continued performance by an older player is probably most crticial here for the Bills D. FS- Vincent showed great performance here in the few games he played as McGee being forced to develop by injury prompted the Bills to make this move all (including Vincent) planned on in 2005 or 2006. Again being an older player and with last year's injury recurring nicks are a real concern and back-up FS is an important issue. Baker was quite impressive as a UDFA who had to take a starting role. Since I feel better about Vincent than Milloy (though I hope and assume both will perform) I almost wish Baker was a potential FS back-up as I feel better about him than Wire. Leonhard shows some interesting promise as a hitter and we will see this pre-season whether he has Baker like chops as a cover guy or Wire like deficits. I do not seem him as an answer in 2005 but certainly as a prospect. WLB- Spikes is a Pro Bowler at the top of his game and even if he declines he is so respected and high in performance he will be good this year unless hurt. Crowell has shown some good production on ST, but clearly would have to step up and show more if he were forced to start. he might do this, but has had no chance to show this for sure and because Spikes is so good even if Crowell impressed this would be a big drop-off. Crowell was highly regarded enough as a rookie to command a first day draft pick and has shown sone signs of being a player however, given Spikes history and playing ability this is an issue one wouldn't worry about as we will just have to deal with life. MLB- Fletcher at 8 years he has shown few signs of slipping, but he is at the top of his game right now and will not get younger. He should reaasonably be expected to produce again this year but I would be surprised if there are not more serious decline questions asked next year. As a shorter player, his speed and ability are a big part of his game and thus he is vulnerable to age affecting his performance more than others. However, part of his speed is that he is a smart player as shown by him taking and commanding the unquestioned pulicly captaincy of the D despite there being D performers all around him who made the Pro Bowl when he was overlooked. Back-up is important here but not game critical. If nicks slow him down look for him not to maintain his ST role as short-return guy first. Haggan has also shown some good ST performance but little time as a position player so he is an unknown. he was one of the last players drafted so if called upon there is little in his pedigree to expect him to step up. However, he dropped in the draft below where many thought his talent would have him go and he has shown no signs as a pro of any issues which caused him to drop. #rd string back-up Exekial shows some development promise but is not an issue regarding replacement of our starter if necessary. Again this is an issue to watch but not of concern as Fletcher is just hitting 30. SLB- Some posters tend to hyperventialate over Posey who has disappointed them. However, it appears to say more about the failings of the posters in assessing play than any failings of Posey. A more in depth analysis of how Gray runs the D as was done in earlier in depth research by TSW poster CD Nittam and which I have done in passing noting his play actually shows the performance by Posey for the Bills to be quite impressive the last two years and as good as Sikes/Fletcher are there is a credible case to be made that Posey is near (not as good but near) as important to the good statistical results the Bills have registered the last two years. Folks need to recognize that he is a quality player merely through the fact he has started every game two years in a row and logged lots of PT for a D whicvh has performed. The complaints of some posters that they though he turned the wrong way or took bad angles even if true has not been accompanied with any objective showings that the player he likely had either scored or got a big gain because of the observations noted. Add to this that the more in depth analyses seem to indicate that what Posey does bring to the table is the ability to make a good read and anticipate whether the O is going to run or pass on the play and also to mix up with Gray's general guidance and planning his dropping back into coverage or attacking the run appropriately on each play. Upon analysis I am even more impressed with our starting LB corps across the board. We seem more solid at back-up SLB than the other LB spotes, Stamer has shown some good athletiticism when he is used and Gray uses him as a position player more than Crowell or Haggan so he should be prepared to answer the call if needed. As good as Stamer may be, i see no signs that he would/should replace Posey who is a couple of inches taller, a hair heavier and yet seems more nimble than Stamer. Stamer has not shown at all that he can make the same quality of reads as the reaching his peak vet Posey after signing as an FA in 03. Of particular note here though is the observation that to some extent in the zone blitz, there appears to be a credible case to make that the Posey drop-off or run stuff responsibiity is actually backed up by Denney who long arm span and atheleticism allow him to play a crtical role for Posey who often lines up on the DL as the strongside rush guy gives me a lot of confidence we can fill in for Posey if necessary be it Stamer on earlier downs and Denney at cruch time. LDE- Kelsay has really stepped up here and as a young player developing his craft this will potentially be the year where he develop into being enough of a sackmaster that he draws more attention. As best as I can tell the sacks Kelsay has earned are due more to his persistence and motor than to his being a natural sackster. If Kelsay has gained the skills to get off the dime well and beat an opponent with his first move or developed a quality second move so he is quickly in rather than his good performance simply plugging away the zone blitz can hum. If opposing Ds need to use two players to account for Kelsay he really frees up Schobel or provides great potential for LBs firing in. he may do this, we'll see. Denney is refered to as a co-starter with Kelsay by the braintrust. Denney clearly does not have the sack skills to compete with Kelsay, however, I think this co-starter rubric actually comes from Denney showing large wingspan and skills to be the sole back-up to both DEs in a D which relies on DL rotation. Further, Denney actually excels more at runstiffing than sacking so he has been used as a DT (my guess it was use of a 3 DE package on 3rd down which led to both Phat Pat and Adams being sat on 3rd down which cause Adams to go ballistic at one point last year. I think folks are holding Denney being not a good enough player to even play his first season as he had some leverage issues which were solved. He really is a solid Bill and his flexibility is one of the things which makes the zone blitz work so well. LT- Adams like Milloy is probably the player of an age most likely to have a sudden downturn in productvity. However, already in the scrimmage against the Pack Adams showed that he still has one of the quickest and most deceptive first steps in the game. He earned his Pro Bowl nod last year and the idea that Adamswho was renowned for going on vacation half or more of the game even in his hayday as a player would actually B word publicly at the coaches for not letting him play on thid down was phenomenal to see. He clealry in the backside of his career in his 12th year. Yet, the new found diligence has been accompanied by weight loss and Adams being in better shape. Given the scrimmage performance, him starting all 16 for the first time in 4 seasons last year and recording over 40 tackles for the first time since 1997 while back-up status is a clear issue it is not outlandish at all to hope for another very good year from Adams. The back-up issue is a concern though as behind him on the depth chart is Justin Bannan. Bannan impressed his rookie year but failed to develop enough that he was used on the O (successfully) in the redzone and this off-season was briefly categorized fully as a G (until the signing of Anderson and loss of Phat Pat made it necessary for Bannan to come back to DT. I think that the actual back-up here if Adams can't go is that we will go to a 3 DE scheme using Denney rather than go to Bannan. RT- Edwards is the #1 and he is on the upside of his career. he disappointed as a rookie as those drafted both before and after him started for a poor 3-13 Bills team. If he couldn't play on that squad it was a problem. However, he has slowly improved from being a substandard stater his second year to be a quality back-up last year. This showing and him retaining the speed which got him multiple sacks while also putting on some bulk critical to run stopping DT means he may well be a good player this year. Anderson is behind him on the depth chart and this player was well regarded enough that he also is a serious candidate for the opening left by Phat Pat's leaving though he has none ofthe actual production Edwards showed which makes him a better bet. RDE- Schobel is about to hit or in his prime. Denney and the one-blittz scheme were really the back-ups here where there was no one on the depth chart at RDE after the IR to Ritzman. This year Osunde has already passed Ritzman and will get a look see for spot duty in the DL rotation. Overall, in addition to this worry about age the loss of PW has been put forward as reasons for a decline in the D performance. On the contrary, with good use of the scheme as Gray has shown for two years, i see no drop-off from the loss of PW who after all even as starter was on the field for less than 2/3 of the D snaps (him routinely sitting on third downs does not fully explain this, it was intentional in terms of how the scheme was employed and the D has players who had good success even with the good skills of PW. As far as age, I would say that IF Milloy gets nicked, AND Wire fails to step up, AND no one else from the FS's can step over AND there in scheme or application fix to make up for this we will have to look to the waiver wire. This is not good but not impossible. The only other age issue I see is that Adams is a bit long in the tooth. However, he produced last year and over his Bills career to show signs that even this situation will work out and I am not worried about the age issue in any untoward way.

In addition to complaining here about it, i really hope that customers who feel they did not get what they paid for or what they had gotten in the past will let the Bills management know about this. A cliche in business is that the customer is always right. While football fans (like the couple of Bills fans who once has sex during a game in full view of attending kid)have proven this is not always true, in general the customer feeling he did not get a good deal must be taken seriously if you are a good business. The Bills who are not that far removed from the days where they handled will call tickets by putting them in shoeboxes thought advancing into at least the 20th century need to keep improving. Feedback from customers is a key to this. If the Bills are smart, they monitor websites such as this to keep track of what the customers are talking about. They need not assign this task to Tom Donahoe, they can have an intern do it. They should not this serious discomfort of some customers. Failing the Bills being smart (which does happen too often in American business, customers who care about the team should be in their face a bit to let specific displeasure be known. I'm not sure how Lori and other disgruntled parties should best do this, but I suggest: 1. > http://www.buffalobills.com/utility/EmailtheBills.jsp < is where you e-mail the Bills. This is an address on the websites for questions. I'm pretty sure that response goes beyond the technical web question and if they cannot answer a business question they likely will refer it. 2. > http://www.buffalobills.com/fans/BillsBack...?chapter_id=139 < is the URL for the Bills Backers Chapters. There are ways to contact them by e-mail here and I would find a fellow Bills Backer to help get a message up the foodchain. 3. One Bills Drive Orchard Park, NY 14217 is the address for the Bills Administrative Office and a letter to there will get to the business side. The phone number is 716/648-1800 and give 'em a call and talk to them if this is more efficient for you. Folks can gripe on TSW and do nothing about this problem if what floats their boat is simply to gripe. (As Americans we have a constitutional right to ineffectually complain and whine and our elected officials seem to like it that way). However, if you want to actually do something I suggest you contact someone who might be able to do something through one of the above or some better means.

The apology would be for faulting TD for not signing him. TD said he made a fair offer to JJ and that JJ turned him dow. Several posters wailed about this and made a variety of post which in essence said we should pay to keep JJ. Who knows outside of these two what the offer was and whether it wa in fact reasonable, but the market rules and the market said JJ in the free market was worth a Pro Bowl expenditure. My sense is that based on his past career and on him already being injured during his brief stint with SF JJ is not worth Pro Bowl money. If future events turn out likethe recent past (no gurantee that it will) the real men (or women) who faulted TD for not signing JJ to a Pro Bowl size offer he got in real life would certainly do the correct thing and admit that TD was right and they were wrong. They could hide in the refuge of claiming that TD could have resigned JJ for a far less than Pro Bowl size amount he got in real life, but they would simply be showing how small they are by hiding behind this thin argument.

This is not surprising at all. We will see how this plays out over the course of the season and good luck to JJ avoiding injuiries. However if JJ produces this year in the same manner he did for the Bills, never starting all 16 games at any point in his career, those who attacked TD for not resigning JJ early or certainly for paying what the market dictated for him will owe TD an apology. The need for apology will be muted if the Bills fail to solve their LT problems with the resources we have, but it looks increasingly doubful that the presnce of JJ being overpaid to either miss a start or go out early due to injury in 4 of 16 games last year was not the answer either if we further constrained our cap by keeping him.

While I found that Sterling and whoever made their comments in the usaul run at the mouth stupid execution which defines NFL announcers who really work to avoid the "worse case" od dead air (they would rather say something stupid than not say anything at all) I think their analysis though often stated incorrectly (I don't think they ever squared away or stuck to a definition of what was a physical error and what was a mental error) was actually based in a good cut on the task which confronts the Bills and limitations which reality has placed upon us. The Bills D is special and with the return of 10 of 11 starters and Jerry Gray really showing mastery of the techincal and strategic approach to D should remain special. The Bills O has some very talented playmakers (Moulds, McGahee, Evans and potentially Parrish) but questions remain about the trenches and virtually guaranteed that JP will at least have some hiccups as he learns to become a vet, He shows great talent and the potential is real, but potential simpl means you have not done anything real yet and JP is noting but potetial. The ST was also special last year and while itis not unreasonable that they will be just as good and it is even possible that due to the poor placekicking performance (an issue they did not mention) they could be better, it is also possible if not likely that the ST production will go down just because the odd-shaped ball may not bounce as favrably as it did last year. Advances in technology such as the first down stripe overlaid on pictures, use of the crawl so scores can be flashed and the score and clock overalid on the picture and use of the web if folks choose in parallel to the broacast as actually made me look forward to the day when they once again try the announceless game. The experiment with this in the 70s failed (though part of this was the commentators having a vested interest in promoting the announcers so they trashed the announcerless game) because like many first time efforts they did not tell the viewer enough about what was happening and issues like the refs blowng valls (at least they did not blow the coin-flip this game) are impossible to sort out merely with game sound and pictures. However, with use of a good producer using modern techology and a game analyst who can butt in to do audio noting key points that add to viewing of the game no more than once or twice a quarter I think it it time to go announcerless again in a serious way. I can often turn the TV announcer off and listen to the humorous mistakes of the radio homers if the TV has an idit like Dierdor or Trumpy, but with a good producer and modern technology a good product that adds to the entertainment of the viewer could be produced and I hope they do this and give us the options which modern technology can provide.

He is a clear representation of the cliche that potential just means you haven't done anything yet. Sobieski hung around because he showed extraordinary potential at multiple OL positions during his injury-marred collegiate career and off and on ability to practice. His salary (below the 50-odd player cap cut-off) is so small that he was and is easy to keep due to his potential. However, yet another injury weighs heavily against the thought he will ever realize his potential. Since he has no cap effect. I doubt he is much of a distraction for JMac as all his work is on injury rehab with the trainer and I have no personal concerns for Ralph's $ if there is no cap impact (there are no signs he pursues the Rigas model of doing business) I do not care whether we keep him or not.

Actually there are a couple of things about how this case was found in our system that seem to be incorrect in your post. First, he was found NOT GUILTY rather than being deemed innocent by our system. There is an important difference between these two findings. If he was in fact deemed innocent by our system then there could be no other legal finding against him for causing the deaths of these two people. He was "merely" found not guilty which in our system where the state bears the heavy burden of proof before it can take rights away for citizens or anyone subject to our rules the state cannot take action against him. However as he was clearly not deemed innocent he was subject to a private suit against him for wrongful death in causing the end of life for these two people. Dounle jeopardy prevemted the state from continuing to try him but this is America and anyone can sue anyone. In this case though he was found not guilty as the state did not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of his peers, he was found gulity of these two murdurs by a preponderence of the evidence in a legal proceeding. Flat-oy OJ is a murderer and has been founf to be so in court of law with him having full opportunity to mount a defense against these charges. In addition, to this regardless of what you and I think is right or wrong RWS owns 100% of the Bills and is completely within his rights to set the rules for entry by any standard he chooses (If he wants he can reject anyone with blonde hair, anyone taller than 5' 8'' likely leavimg Flutie as the only member, or anyone at all ho happened to kill their wife and a waiter). My guess is that it would be bad entertainment and he would lose a lot of money if he discrimanated against all blon players or tall people. However, of he chose to alienate all the double murderers I'm sure folks would likely understand that seeing too much (or any) of OJ just is not entertaining to many people and also would be an embaraasment to many of the folks he plans to honor to be included in a group with OJ even though they were both players. Consistency is not a requirement for this.

Actually the Bills are a free market enterprise in a state which operates under a capitalist rather than a communist economic system. If Ralph makes a judgment as the sole owner of the Bills not to include OJ for whatever reason he chooses then OJ is not in and that is the rule and operation of our system even if it is incomvenient for some. The same is true if he is in.

Like life, there is no requirement that a Bills HOF make complete sense.